Tauranga District Court<\/a> for ill-treatment and neglect of a vulnerable adult.<\/p>\nThe court heard he had \u201cintentionally engaged in conduct, namely neglect, likely to cause [his mother] suffering\u201d, and this conduct was a \u201cmajor departure\u201d from the standard of care expected of a reasonable person.<\/p>\n
He was also charged with stealing his mother\u2019s gold ring on August 29, 2025, which he then took to Cash Converters.<\/p>\n
It cost the woman\u2019s family members $175.50 to get the ring back from the business.<\/p>\n
He told police he had intended to buy it back \u201cwithin the month\u201d and had only borrowed it to pawn for money for bills.<\/p>\n
The man was also charged with possession of a methamphetamine pipe.<\/p>\n
In court, his lawyer, Amy Baker, said he was trying to make \u201call efforts to better himself\u201d and had completed a workshop while in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs has already been discussed, obviously methamphetamine is the driving factor behind what\u2019s occurred here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Baker noted that from her own observation, the man presented \u201centirely differently\u201d than when she first met him in the police custody cells, which was indicative of the fact that \u201csubstance abuse was very much at the heart of the offending\u201d.<\/p>\n
Baker handed the judge a brief letter of remorse and apology from the man.<\/p>\n
Judge Dean Blair had earlier this year given the man a sentence indication adopting a 24-month starting point.<\/p>\n
The man had accepted the indication, and entered guilty pleas to the three charges.<\/p>\n
The judge had been open to a sentence of home detention, but Baker said no suitable address was available.<\/p>\n
The judge allowed a 20% discount for his guilty plea.<\/p>\n
Judge Blair, noting the man had made comments to a pre-sentence report writer in which he challenged \u201csome of the specifics\u201d of what happened, said it was \u201ctoo late for [the man] to give a different outline of what happened\u201d because he had pleaded guilty to the summary of facts.<\/p>\n
The report concluded that the man had a \u201clack of empathy and responsibility for the situation\u201d, but it was common ground that he had been dealing with a \u201cmethamphetamine use issue\u201d when the neglect occurred.<\/p>\n
Judge Blair said that, before the incident, the man\u2019s mother had been living in her own home, \u201cwhere she felt secure\u201d.<\/p>\n
Now, her life had changed dramatically and she was living in permanent residential care, unable to return home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss of the home, familiar surroundings and way of life has been most difficult,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n
Her health had deteriorated and she felt \u201chorrified\u201d by what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe betrayal felt is difficult to put into words for her,\u201d Judge Blair said.<\/p>\n
The judge said the aggravating features were the breach of trust, the victim\u2019s vulnerability, the degree of callousness in the man\u2019s actions and the extent of the neglect and harm caused to the victim.<\/p>\n
Once the guilty plea discount was applied, the end sentence was 20 months and two weeks\u2019 imprisonment on the neglect charge.<\/p>\n
He received two months\u2019 imprisonment on each of the other charges, to be served concurrently.<\/p>\n
The judge also ordered $176.50 in reparation to cover the cost incurred by the family in retrieving the woman\u2019s gold ring and granted the woman a protection order.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n
Join NZ Herald\u2019s Open Justice team for Case by Case<\/a>, a video and podcast series examining the disputes and decisions making headlines across New Zealand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She remained on the floor for 14 hours until a granddaughter went to check on her after family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22256,57878,74,35838,2082,42,1364,11551,54106,2845,5158,6178,42919,43,1118,90,1227,223,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-555490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-22256","tag-82yearold","tag-after","tag-floor","tag-for","tag-headlines","tag-her","tag-hours","tag-imprisoned","tag-leaving","tag-man","tag-mother","tag-neglect","tag-news","tag-of","tag-on","tag-tauranga","tag-the","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}